I have lived here for over 22 years. I moved to Bend in the Spring before I started 4th grade. I graduated from Redmond High in 2006 and then moved on to COCC for a few years. I spent over a decade being a student in Central Oregon. More specifically, I spent over a decade being a black female student in Central Oregon. I won’t lay out the details of my lived experience but it suffices to say there was a lot left to be desired. I encountered systemic barriers, outright discrimination, and prejudice. There were multiple challenges besides being a minority that contributed to my subpar educational experience, but they only enhanced the inequities that stunted my academic potential in my formative years. Rest assured, I made it through. In the end, I got where I needed to go and earned a master’s degree at a top university in 2018. But I made it despite my local educational experience and not because of it.
Today, I am thankful for the long road I walked. It provided me with a unique perspective on the educational gaps in Central Oregon, from curriculum to honors classes to college preparedness. I am painfully aware of how inequitable systems can show up in many forms and harm our most vulnerable populations. I will never stop advocating for transforming those same systems. My academic journey taught me an irrevocable truth; fighting for equitable education is not just a battle; it’s the war.
So, I am writing to you today as a black womxn, a former student, a community leader, a local business owner, and above all else, as a proud Central Oregonian to say that the school board elections that are happening right now matter.
A few years ago, I was still a displaced person who had no deep ties to the community I was raised in. I was a stranger to the spaces of power and influence in Deschutes County. I was convinced I would need to go elsewhere to be listened to or heard. Yet, I witnessed a steady shift in Central Oregon over the last five years, sparked by national upheaval and political unrest. I watched my community choose progress, accountability, and transformation in small ways and then with greater boldness. Are we where we should be? Not even close, our steps thus far have been slow, but they have also been necessary, and the defenders of the status quo are beginning to fear the changes that inclusivity demands.
It was Central Oregonians that made me believe in Central Oregon as I watched the BIPOC and other disenfranchised community members begin to fight to belong, to run for public office, open businesses, and launch nonprofits advocating for themselves at every level. I saw white community members, white-led organizations, and other white spaces cede power and influence with enthusiasm to those who have always deserved it, needed it, and had given up hope on ever obtaining it. By 2020, I was not only inspired by our shared victories; I was ecstatic. I have spent too much time here not to be enthused about our trajectory as a growing and diverse community. Central Oregon is becoming something special, something uniquely us.
But, I must raise the proverbial alarm about a near and present danger to our hard-won victories. We seem to have stumbled onto a powder keg of reactionary and toxic politics in our local school board races, with a specific disaster brewing in the Bend-LaPine race. In many ways, this power struggle in Central Oregon is a microcosm of what is happening in our nation. Our highly polarizing political scene has been taking a toll on all of us. The fight for equity and inclusion has begun to take its rightful place center stage, resulting in a growing number of detractors with an agenda to hold us back. All across the country, this rising opposition to progress is sounding a “call to arms” to take back their communities from “the woke left.” These types of candidates lack the empathy and insight required to address any inequity. These candidates fail most dramatically when addressing racial barriers in education because they refuse to acknowledge their existence.
They are afraid, so they must react, they must conserve, they must resist. They gather in Facebook groups and rant at their exclusive gatherings about how they are “losing their country.” The leaders feed everyone confusing half-truths and fear-based arguments and send their followers out into the world to seize power and influence wherever they can find it. When you see them in the media or the comment threads of Twitter, they spout the same narratives, using buzzwords like “Marxism” and “Critical Race Theory '' hoping to incite and emotionally manipulate white America. They are showing up at city halls, standing in the way of initiatives, or our case, running for our districts’ school board of directors. Every community in America must be vigilant against the latent Trumpism showing up in local politics, but none more so than in Central Oregon; thanks to an extreme imbalance of power, all it would take to erase years of work in the right direction is one apathetic special election cycle on May 18th.
It is time for the Central Oregon BIPOC community and our allies to assess our school board candidates with pragmatic eyes. I am concerned that some dangerous opponents have been obfuscating the truth and making something simple overly complicated. I have watched in horror as a slate of candidates in the Bend-LaPine race denied the relevance of historical and systemic racism on national television. I read in disgust the op-ed written in Jefferson county, mocking the desire for Indigenous representation on their school board. In the Redmond school board race, a candidate with known ties to a white supremacist group is on the ballot.
These are only a few examples illustrating what we have to lose this Tuesday. Our school boards are powerful conduits that directly influence our direction as a community. And the truth is this; if you are not dedicated to building an equitable and inclusive educational system in Central Oregon schools, you have no business running for school board.
If you cannot understand how students from families of color, rural families, low-income families, students who are English language learners or have a disability have been historically and systemically pushed to the margins — experiencing persistent disparities — then you cannot be entrusted with our children’s well-being.
If you cannot comprehend the overwhelming data that proves public education must prioritize these populations and resolve these barriers to be successful in every sense of the word, then you are not fit to represent anyone in this community. You cannot be blind and deaf to Central Oregon’s multilayered problems with diversity, equity, inclusion, and access and expect to be taken seriously; that is the message that Central Oregon must send tomorrow night.
We will only benefit from having transformative leaders willing to examine existing inequities within our school systems and be accountable to resolve them. We cannot afford indifferent leadership who wants to erase our experiences through willful ignorance. This is what our Central Oregon school board races come down to; do you care about educational injustice or not? We must have leaders who are invested in every student’s well-being and willing to take steps towards building substantial educational outcomes across the spectrum.
I am challenging each of you to examine our school board candidates’ options with me and deliver your ballot to an official drop site by 8 pm tomorrow. I want you to get ten friends to do it with you. If you believe increasing diversity, equity, inclusion, and access is the path forward, you need to identify who is for us and who is against us and fight like hell to ensure we do not lose a single race to ignorance or inaction. This reactionary political drama is playing itself out in white-majority communities all over America, and many are happening in school board races just like ours.
I am confident that if we are vigilant, no Central Oregon student will face the same level of educational injustice that I and many others experienced just ten years ago. But this will happen only if we are vigilant, if we face ourselves every day in the mirror and ruthlessly uproot systemic racism, exclusionary practices, and organized prejudice within our public and private systems. We have barely begun this work, but what has been done must be protected. We cannot afford to lose. We can not let individuals who do not know the first thing about equity to continue to hold power and influence while mocking and dismissing our dream for an inclusive Central Oregon.
So, if you live in Bend, vote for Carrie Douglass, an experienced community leader who founded a national non-profit propelling school boards across the country towards better representation and policy and started a business in Central Oregon that supports and amplifies the efforts of BIPOC communities and women. Vote for Marcus Legrand, another pillar of our community who has already given hundreds of hours building capacity for Central Oregon students. Vote for Janet Llerandi, whose cross-sector skill set and lived experience offer multiple opportunities for transformation. Vote for Shirley Olsen because of her lifetime of educational knowledge and watch her leverage it for Bend-LaPine schools.
If you are in Redmond, vote for Stephanie Hunter and Lavon Medlock. And, if you are in Jefferson County, vote for Jaylyn Suppah. I can promote these names for school boards with confidence because they have each been endorsed by Strengthening Central Oregon PAC, a community-led non-partisan PAC that identifies and supports incredible candidates for local elections whose values strongly align with creating equitable systems across the board. If you are anywhere else in Central Oregon where I can’t offer SCOPAC’s guidance, then go and do your due diligence and find out who represents the change you are demanding. I promise you that with what we have seen from their opponents, your votes are either for or against the girl I was ten years ago and every student like me today; there is no in-between.
Please do not stop at our school board races or the special election tomorrow; stay vigilant and seize every opportunity to be civically engaged. Always be aware of which leaders move us forward, which ones drive us back, and keep us trapped in place. This race isn't our first battle, and it won't be the last. We will have this type of back-and-forth vitriol for years to come in every upcoming election cycle, but I am proud of Central Oregon. We can’t let up or let go even for a moment. We can’t just resist. We have to push so that, together, for every inch given, we take a mile.
